National Grid land eyed for downtown parking garage

Thursday

May 24, 2007 at 2:00 AM

By Jason Graziadei I&M Staff Writer

Town leaders have proposed a downtown parking garage – a two- or three-level structure that could accommodate up to 300 vehicles – for the waterfront property behind the Grand Union supermarket and the Harbor Fuel tank farm.

Planners envision the garage as a component of a larger downtown development project that would surround and shield the parking facility with mixed-use buildings intended for housing, office space and retail businesses.

The catch? The town doesn’t own the property, nor does it intend to buy it. National Grid, the former Nantucket Electric Company and the owner of the parcel, is in the initial phases of determining the fate of the 2.24-acre property which was the former site of the company’s electricity generators.

The prospect of such a large and important piece of downtown real estate going on the market prompted members of the Board of Selectmen and the Planning Department to propose a public/private partnership with the British-owned utility conglomerate to guide the redevelopment of the site.

“Rather than wait for a developer to come forward with a proposal, the Board of Selectman and the planning commission said we need to get in there first,” planning director Andrew Vorce said. “It’s about taking a proactive, rather than a reactive, approach to a property that’s about to go on the market.”

Selectmen discussed the new parking garage concept during a goal-setting meeting Tuesday morning.

“If we’re going to address parking, we need to think big,” Selectman Allen Reinhard said. Brian Chadwick, who along with Whitey Willauer, were the selectmen who pushed for a development that included more than just transportation or parking, said the current proposal addresses a variety of municipal needs.

“We’re selling an idea,” Chadwick said. “National Grid answers to its stockholders, and we’re trying to sell this concept to them and the town. And the plan is to address parking, transportation, housing and businesses. It’s a huge thing.”

While Vorce admitted that the town has little influence over how a private company disposes of its property, he said the Selectmen and the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission (NP&EDC) have already proposed the parking garage concept to National Grid, and can offer some financial incentives – in the form of a new state economic development program – to potential developers willing to work with the town. Vorce said he hopes to sell National Grid on the parking garage proposal, and have the company issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the redevelopment of the site that would meet the town’s goals for the area.

“A private developer will have contingencies, and working with the town, rather than possibly against it, is important,” Vorce said. “The idea is that it’s not just a parking garage. There’s other components like housing, transportation and businesses. What we bring to the table is some financing incentives that could help pay for the parking garage.”

More specifically, Vorce cited the state District Improvement Finance (DIF) program, a public financing alternative available to all cities and towns in Massachusetts. Offered through the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, the DIF program allows municipalities to fund public works, infrastructure and development projects by allocating future, incremental tax revenues collected from a predefined district to pay for project costs.

Still, Vorce said the town and National Grid are far from any agreement regarding the property, and have only discussed the parking garage concept on a preliminary basis, although a meeting is planned for June 14. Dave Fredericks, a vice-president with National Grid in charge of the company’s Nantucket operation, said the company was in the “early stages” of discussing the future of the property.

“These kinds of decisions are made by a group of people, and we’re getting that group together to at least hear what the town has to say,” Fredericks said. “We want to get a sense of what the town thinks is the right use for the property. We as a company recognize the unique location, and the town brings to the process not only its view of what it could be, but holds the key in the sense of the permits and things required to build down there.”

National Grid recently completed its cleanup of the site, which included the removal of hazardous materials left over from its time as a power-generation facility, as well as a large storage tank which was taken down last fall. Currently, the site contains three brick structures, of which only one is currently in use by the electric company. That building, on the corner of Candle and Commercial streets, houses the substation that is the transition point for the undersea cables that feed the island. The other two buildings are vacant. In addition to the town’s stated interest in the property, there have typically been numerous inquiries each year from private groups or individuals about the parcel, Fredericks added.

“We get a reasonable number of people each year who contact us about the property,” he said. “But this process is going to take awhile. It’s a complicated piece of property, and we have not developed a plan or decided what the best uses are.”

Despite National Grid being in the preliminary stages of discussing the property, the town has already hired a private consultant who produced a site analysis study, complete with three different design options for the parking-garage concept. The report has already been reviewed in a closed-door, executive session last year, and Vorce said both the Selectmen and the NP&EDC have endorsed the parking garage concept. The author of the study, Timothy Haahs & Associates, Inc., of Blue Bell, Pa., is a company that has been involved in the siting of parking garages in “sensitive areas” in the past, Vorce said.

The report concluded that the property has sufficient space for a parking garage and “limiting the views of the garage by wrapping with other buildings as well as building-like and human scale detailing will assist in integrating the garage into the fabric of the neighborhood.” The parking garage could potentially double the number of parking spots in the downtown area, which is currently 310 existing spots, according to Transportation Planner Mike Burns.

Although the Nantucket Merchants Association has not yet viewed the report or any specific plans for the property, vice president Wendy Hudson said the group was hopeful that the town would begin to move on a proposal.

“The merchants would love to see some movement on a project – traffic is our No. 1 problem,” said Hudson, who owns Nantucket Bookworks on Broad Street. “The fact that our friends can’t get in to shop at our stores is a problem to say the least. A lot of the parking is taken up by people who work in town, and we need to free up some space.”

The Board of Selectmen has been considering uses for the National Grid property for several years now, and most recently voted unanimously in October 2005 not to pursue a proposed transportation center on the site. Under that plan, the largest of the three brick buildings on the property would have been leased to the town and the NRTA. After the building had been upgraded and improved by the electric company, it would have housed both the NRTA office and a Visitor Services facility, and would have been the central location for NRTA shuttle buses, taxis, and tour and hotel vans.

The board at the time voted down the proposal after vehement opposition from Visitor Services officials and the Nantucket Lodging Association, who argued that moving the town’s information center off Federal Street would be a detriment to island visitors.

Reach Jason Graziadei at jgraziadei@inkym.com

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